Who it Caters to (Use MP# 1)
The Mii characters get their own adventure in Miitopia. Take your created or Mii friends that you’ve met and embark on epic journey to save the Miitopia from the evil Dark Lord. Choose a job class, meet others and prepare for an RPG adventure of a lifetime. Explore branching paths, meet funny new characters and get ready for some random battles and boss battles in equal measure. t

Players of Miitopia should expect a simple but very robust RPG experience. You will need to guide your Mii party through various area fighting random encounters and bosses in equal measure. Your goal is to defeat the various enemies and save the Mii race by giving them back their faces taken from the Dark Lord. You will need to choose your team, level them up and give them attention to make battles ebb more in your favor. While Miitopia may be simple in its gameplay mechanics, players will be thoroughly surprised by just how much depth and variety is packed within this cute RPG title.

In the world of Miitopia, the Mii race are living happily and finding joy in everyday life. However, a so called Dark Lord rises up and begins to attack the Mii people. Using his evil magic, the Dark Lord steals the faces of the Mii people and is placing the stolen faces on his monster race. You just so happen to be a passing traveler that gets caught up in the most recent Dark Lord attack. However, you will soon learn that destiny has something great in store for you as a loud voice bestows upon you the means to fight back. Pick up your weapon Mii and save Miitopia to return the faces taken from the Dark Lord.

Miitopia first and foremost is meant to take the loveable Mii characters we all know and love from Nintendo’s various platforms and makes a game where they are center stage. Even from the start of the game, you’re given the chance to not only make your own Mii character—or use predetermined ones—but you can also create all the characters within Miitopia. Want your friend to be the villain and/or your party members? You can do this and that is easily one of the most adorable and redeeming qualities of Miitopia. In many ways it allows a more personalized quest and we here at Honey’s Anime really thought that made Miitopia even more fun. Now this wouldn’t be a RPG obviously if the role playing elements weren’t done well and we’re going to spoil you a bit here, it’s pretty good.

When you explore an area, Miitopia has very little need of action from you. Players will go to different areas and watch as their Mii party walk from point A to point B with branching pathways at times, random little events and obviously random battles which we’ll get into in a moment. Your goal is to usually get to an Inn at the end of an area. This may seem boring or overly simplified but thankfully Nintendo did two things right by having funny events happen from time to time—such as a character finding a shiny object or seeing a shaking bush with a possible enemy behind it—as well as having an all too important fast forward button. You will appreciate this feature as sometimes it can be a bit of a chore to watch your characters just walking on a screen, even when they are making cute jokes and looking adorable in the process. Now, let us move on to the combat, which is easily one of the coolest features of Miitopia.

The best way to explain the combat of Miitopia is to make a comparison to Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. At the start of the game, you’re tasked with choosing a class—one of several such as warrior, mage and even pop star and even more in the later game—and these will determine your skills and attacks. Players will engage in turn based combat which is simple but Miitopia has a few surprises to make sure it’s not just seen as a clone of those game we mentioned. In Miitopia, you may notice that you need to choose one of several personalities for your various party members—such as kind, cool headed and stubborn—and these won’t just determine how your character is but how they act in combat. For example, we here at Honey’s Anime chose a kind persona for our Mii hero and saw that in combat at times they would take damage for another party member but also wouldn’t want to attack an enemy feeling bad for it and thus wasting a turn. This gameplay mechanic captures the cuteness of Miitopia but equally makes the player think ahead of time in choosing their class to work with these random quirks.

Battles are also interesting in how items work. There aren’t many useable items in Miitopia but there are several that need to be used in smart ways. Your items come in the form of snacks and sprinkles…yes, we said sprinkles. These sprinkles can be used to restore health and MP and even for resurrection. However, you don’t get many and sharing between party members needs to be smartly done as you won’t refill till you reach an inn. We here at Honey’s Anime really were worried at first that this was overly simple but in reality this allows the typical fluff of most RPG games—such as too many healing items—to be removed from the game. Don’t fret if you do run out of sprinkles though at one point in the game you get to use an area called Safe Space where you can heal that way but will be inactive in combat till you return.

Now in typical RPG elements, there is micromanagement within Miitopia but even this element is done in a cute manner. At the inn, players will find they need to feed their Miis and even give them gold so they can buy various items and new equipment. It’s silly and cute—a word we find best explains Miitopia—but all too necessary. Relationships and equipment affect combat and thus, are very important to success in Miitopia. Also, if you don’t like the various equipment looks and designs—being cute sometimes is a double edged sword—you don’t have to equip the new gear, having its updated stat increases you even if you’re not wearing the new gear. Nintendo figured correctly that not everyone would want to be dressed as a Bee if they are supposed to be a warrior, which is an outfit you will obtain by the way.

Graphically Miitopia isn’t anything that will knock your socks off visually but if you find the Mii-like appearance adorable—which we do here at Honey’s Anime—then it’s easy to imagine what the game looks like. The same can be said of the OST which is solid enough but not overly impressive. Miitopia is clearly deserving it’s E for everyone rating so don’t expect anything too mature. That being said for how it looks and sounds as a whole, Miitopia gets a solid thumbs up from us. Though we will never grow tired of the various reactions and faces made in Miitopia, those pull at our heartstrings.

Finally let’s talk about the few flaws within Miitopia which are few but are still issues. Miitopia is going to get repetitive and we mean that in every word. If you’re accustomed to playing a RPG for hours at end, you will find the fast forward button and auto-battle—which are both included—to be necessary life savers. As we mentioned we love the combat but once you’re several hours into Miitopia, you’ll find battles to be a chore until you reach a boss fight. Speaking of battles, the fact that you can’t control your team fully is an issue with us to be honest. While the AI is pretty smart with using a nice mixture of attacks, defensive moves and party buffs, there are times where we watched in horror as an ally used steal to gain an item when they could have focused on a defensive move instead. It’s not a deal breaker mind you but it does get annoying at times.

Miitopia is quite honestly one of the most fun RPG titles we’ve played on the Nintendo 3DS. The various job classes, creative use of using Mii characters for various roles and the sheer depth of combat is actually quite surprising from a Nintendo title like this. We did feel that after a while the fights can get overly repetitive and at times lacking control over your party members can lead to bad moments—especially during boss fights—but overall, we had no real major complaint. Miitopia may not bring new age gameplay revolutions or dramatic changes to the RPG gameplay format but at its core, Miitopia runs smooth and does have some unique ideas to make it a lot of fun. With so much packed into Miitopia, we honestly feel it’s completely worth the price tag and your gaming time.

Miitopia is what we here at Honey’s Anime consider a very good RPG title. We were genuinely surprised that Nintendo took the simple Mii themes and crafted a game that had elements only seen in titles like Final Fantasy or the Dragon Quest series. While it’s not perfect and can get repetitive, if you go into Miitopia being a fan of simple RPGs and the Nintendo style, than you’ll be greeted to a title you should definitely buy for your Nintendo 3DS. Now, we would love to hear what your thought are on Miitopia. Have we swayed your mind into picking Miitopia up or will you wait on it for a possible price drop? Let us know in the comments and be sure to keep checking our amazing website for even better gaming reviews and articles soon to be released.